Askew

By the time that John got over to the group of survivors that were still struggling to fend off the horde of undead, most of the Orcs were already gone. The few who were still alive barely even paused to recognize the Gamer through the sheet of mud that covered his face after being knocked to the ground, and for those that did, that moment they took to pause and identify him usually ended with their own deaths. Still, he found a way into the group of warriors and, with no other choice, he used the tribesmen as weak meat shields while he opened up his inventory. When one part of his ‘shield’ fell, he felt it. A blade would bite into his back, carving a deep swath across his skin that should have bled, and the Orcs roared at one another to get someone to cover the hole. When there weren’t enough Orcs to do that, then Tyrea stepped in to try and help.

-18 HP

It only took him a couple of seconds to find the item that he was looking for… but that time was fatal for the people who tried to protect him. While Tyrea begged for him to fight back or possibly even try to call for help from the Dragon he had freed, John busied himself with reaching for the weapon that Robyn and Eddie had given to him. He didn’t know how to use the grenade launcher, or if it even could help him safely create a path for the Orcs to escape, but it was the only option he could think of. With a little bit of luck, he figured it might be possible for him to run through and try to grab Dofi and Urga as well… if they were still alive.

Except… as soon as he got the gun out, he fumbled around with the weapon trying to find some kind of safety switch or something so he could make it ready to fire. It was already loaded and clean… he just needed more time to learn how to use it, but there was no time left. While he was fiddling around with the launcher, he could hear sickly rasping noises from one of the empty spots behind him and the sounds of metal clashing against metal slowly dissipated. A gentle hand tugged at his armor and John instinctively tried to shake them off… but Tyrea demanded his attention.

“JOHN!” she screamed, and the Gamer turned to watch as a familiar Elemental stomped up to the group. The wailing of ghostly faces in its rocky surfaces was strangely muffled by all the dark, brackish blood that was covering it. He already knew who the blood belonged to, he had watched it happen when the Beacon stabbed one of its giant spear-like arms through Mub’s shoulder and tossed him aside. Now, it was just dripping from the spike it had in place of a hand while the Elemental hefted its giant limb up… and then swiped across the group as quickly as it could! The forearm of the monster slammed into John’s chest before he could even stand up, and physically threw him across the battlefield! The Grenade Launcher in his hand clicked as he finally readied it… and then his landing was immediately muffled by the booming noise made when he accidentally fired it into one of the nearby groups of undead.

CRITICAL HIT! -29 HP!

Again, the air was knocked out of his chest. Hundreds of sharp pieces of bone spattered against his cheek before the smoke even cleared and revealed the small crater that his weapon had made. His ears started ringing again… but he recovered from that quickly. The Elementals didn’t stand a chance against a weapon like that, so when he sat up to retaliate against the thing that had struck him, his finger was already on the trigger when he pointed it at Tyrea.

He froze when the redhead looked at him with tears in her eyes… and a strangely happy smile on her face, and then his gaze followed her finger to the spot where she was pointing. The waves of dead parted for only a second as John turned to look… and then blinked when Mub’s ugly, scarred visage appeared and then vanished. He was covered in just as much blood and mud as John was, and the eyepatch that the Orc normally had covering the empty socket where one of his eyes used to be was gone and forgotten. Except, where John was covered in the blood of other people, Mub looked to be covered in viscera from his own wounds. He looked like a zombie… but he screamed like he had a speaker in his chest and took every attack that was swung at him or the little Gnome that had huddled up against his leg.

“ALPHA!” John heard the Orc shout again over the stomping and growling, and then he turned back to look at Tyrea as she too was impaled upon the spear-like arm of the Ruin Elemental. Her body jerked, just like Grace’s form had jerked when she had been shot, as a foot of glowing amethyst pushed through the front of her torso. She opened her mouth for a moment as John tried to dash forward, but only crimson spilled from Tyrea’s lips before she went limp. The elemental didn’t bother throwing this one. As soon as it had her, it threw her body on the ground for John to watch… and then it stepped on her to get to him, and John fired. The first grenade was more than enough to destroy the monster.

The upper half of the creature disappeared in an explosion that sent purple crystals flying everywhere and caused it to collapse, but John shoved it aside before it could fall back on Mub’s ****. Immediately after that, the first explosion was followed by a second, a third, and then a fourth as John fired as quickly as he could to open a path between himself and what might have been the last member of his pack, and each time he squeezed his finger, he watched as dozens of the Hallowed disappeared. The forces closest to John thinned out long enough for Dofi and Mub to make a mad dash towards John, but the Gamer didn’t have enough ammo to get them anywhere else. The last shot he had was nothing more than another deafening sound added to the choir of battle barely raging on. His grenade launcher was expended and dropped back into his inventory, while a pair of alerts appeared in front of him to inform him of his Level Ups!

He fought back with his own powers, finally, while Dofi tried to play the medic for Tyrea, but his mana quickly ran dry. It didn’t matter how many he killed, or how many more level ups he got after that. Eventually, the enemies stopped giving him enough experience. His health stopped regenerating when the levels stopped coming. His mana bar got so empty that he could feel his mouth drying up when he tried to use it, and at some point, the enemies got close enough to **** him to the ground again. He was hit until his head was ringing and he could feel the world spinning around him, forcing him to go limp while the dead struggled to pull him out of the way so they could claw at Dofi and Mub again...

… and then the world went black. John passed in and out of consciousness in the middle of the battlefield, and the last image in his mind was one of Mub ripping another weapon out of the ground to continue fighting. He might have dreamed it, but he could have sworn he felt himself being dragged. He heard his allies screaming one last time while the ringing in his ears grew and grew like they had when his grenade launcher had been creating explosions around Dornwich, but he didn’t see their last moments.